By Kathleen McGowan
There’s lots to listen to this week, as well as a lot of concerts being canceled or postponed because of winter weather. Please take care if you’re traveling to hear or perform live music!
On January 25th, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra (Curtis Institute of Music) was scheduled to perform Missy Mazzoli’s single-movement Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), conducted by Yiran Zhao (her website). Zhao is the Rita E. Hauser Conducting Fellow at Curtis, and one of two 2025 Conducting Fellows at the Tanglewood Music Center. Mazzoli writes in her note for the performance that, “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) is music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit . . . It’s a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed, in the process transforming the ensemble into a makeshift hurdy-gurdy, flung recklessly into space.” The work was originally commissioned for the LA Philharmonic, and its instrumentation was later expanded by the composer for performance with the Boulder Philharmonic.
The concert was canceled due to inclement weather to ensure the safety of performers and audience members, but take a listen here:
La Maestra International Competition for Women Conductors has announced its candidates for the 2026 competition. For its fourth installment, the biennial competition is again collaborating with the Philharmonie de Paris and the Orchestra Paris Mozart. The selection committee chose 16 candidates from among 225 applications, and they come from 13 countries: Turkey, Greece, Canada, Mexico, Palestine, South Korea, Ukraine, China, France, Spain, Germany, Cuba, and the United States. The candidates will perform with the Paris Mozart Orchestra; those advancing to the finals will perform a second concert with the Philharmonie de Paris. Finalists will also participate in the La Maestra Academy, a two-year program of mentorship in conducting and international professional support for women conductors.
On Saturday January 24th, the final round of the Rebecca Clarke Song Competition takes place at the Royal Overseas League. Founded and run by SWAP’ra (Supporting Women and Parents in Opera), in 2026 the competition is celebrating 150 years of British women composers in song and is open to professional singer/pianist duos who live and work full-time in the United Kingdom and/or the Republic of Ireland. The competition is unusual because it has no age limit; SWAP’ra has commented in the past that “most competitions set an age limit of 30, just as singers hit their artistic stride. We wanted to do something different: shine a light on the composers, not limit the artists who can champion their work.” Half of the applicants to the festival and nearly two thirds of their semi-finalists are 30 or older: a resounding affirmation of their welcoming attitude toward performers of all ages. In addition to championing Clarke’s work—which applicants do by singing their choice of 2–3 of her songs, depending on which round they’re competing in—the competitors must prepare selections by other living British female composers.
On February 17th the Boulanger Initiative will offer its “Beyond Florence Price” workshop. This is a brand-new workshop from the Boulanger Initiative that will explore a selections of “deep-cuts” repertoire by non-white women composers. Part of B.I.’s goal in giving this workshop is to expand the conversation beyond the “relative monolith of Florence Price”—an excellent and worthy composer in her own right whose music has been enjoying a revival. Programming Price’s music is important work, and it is understandably popular with audiences; B.I. is looking to expand public awareness of other women composers of color by leading a journey from the Renaissance into the 21st-century.
Monster’s Paradise, Hamburg State Opera
In exciting opera news, if you are in Germany, it will be possible to hear three works by three women composers in a single week (!!!) at the beginning of February! (1) Olga Neuwirth’s opera Monster’s Paradise (libretto by Elfriede Jelinek) will have its world premiere performance on Feb. 1 by the Hamburg State Opera. There will be four additional performances, and the opera will also be performed in Zurich shortly after. Monster’s Paradise is a satire on the state of the present that asks “Who will save us from the despots?” in a critique of the current administration in the United States. (2) Elfrida Andrée’s opera Die Fritjof Saga (libretto by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature) will be performed at the Aalto Theater in Essen, Germany in its first fully-staged premiere. Andrée completed the opera in 1898, but only a concert version has been performed before now. This premiere takes place on February 7th, with six additional performances scheduled after that. The entire program book is here, including an essay about the opera, “The other gender of the Vikings” — hey, remember Google translates! (3) Oper Wuppertal will be performing Ethel Smyth’s opera Der Wald alongside Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung on February 8, 15, and March 1, 2026. Oper Wuppertal has also released a new recording of Ethel Smyth’s opera Der Wald (Presto, 2025). Dr. Amy Zigler has previously reported on new recordings of Smyth for WPA, most recently in 2023 when the BBC Symphony Orchestra released their premiere recording of Der Wald on the Resonus label. Oper Wuppertal’s is the first recording in German. So what a great time to be an opera lover in Germany!
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the long-awaited premiere of Lara St. John’s documentary film Dear Lara will happen at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Friday, February 6, 2026. The documentary has been shown in private screenings prior to the film festival—one of which I was able to attend in November 2025. It is every bit as harrowing and truth-telling as it has been described, and is an important documentary that anyone who believes in institutions of classical music needs to see and hear. St. John writes in the mission statement that “In classical music, observers often ask, ‘Where are the women?’ Why do so few rise to become principal players, artistic directors, or internationally celebrated soloists? The answers are disturbing.” The documentary provides some of those answers: it begins with a deeply personal exploration of St. John’s sexual assault while she was a 14 year-old student at the Curtis Institute of Music, which was originally published in The Philadelphia Enquirer; it continues through the letters that other women survivors with similar experiences wrote to her after seeing her story in print. It quickly became clear that the institutional complicity in sexual abuse was not limited to Curtis, but involved institutions the world over. “Joined by fellow musicians, journalists, students and activists pressing for accountability, Lara’s pursuit to illuminate this insidious pattern in the classical music world serves as both a reckoning from within and a rallying cry for cultural change, created by someone who lived an all-too-common ordeal and refused to look away.”
Let us know what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org.